1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display device and a thin film polarizer used for the display device.
2. Description of the Related Art
A display device is a device which visually transmits information to a viewer. In this day and age of sophisticated information society, the existence of the display device is crucial for men and society. Particularly, the performance of a liquid crystal display (LCD) has been remarkably enhanced recently and has been adopted as a display device of a mobile phone, a personal computer, a large-screen television receiver set or the like.
As one example of the display device, there have been known liquid crystal displays. With respect to most of liquid crystal displays, the liquid crystal display includes a liquid crystal display panel in which a liquid crystal layer is provided between a pair of substrates and a backlight unit. By modulating an area beam from the backlight unit by the liquid crystal display panel, the liquid crystal display visually transmits information such as a video or an image to a viewer. The liquid crystal display panel of the liquid crystal display having such a backlight unit has a pair of thin film polarizers which is arranged with a liquid crystal layer sandwiched therebetween. In the conventional liquid crystal display panel, it is often the case that the thin film polarizer is formed of a film-like polarizer (hereinafter referred to as a film polarizer), and the film polarizers are arranged with the pair of substrates and the liquid crystal layer sandwiched therebetween. The film polarizers are adhered to the substrates using an adhesive material (including a tacky adhesive material) respectively.
The film polarizer is configured such that, for example, a thin film polarizer which controls a transmission quantity of light is sandwiched by a pair of protection films. Further, it is necessary to adhere the film polarizer to the substrate using the adhesive material as described above. Accordingly, a method of manufacturing a liquid crystal display panel in which a film polarizer is adhered to a substrate requires a large number of steps so that the method is disadvantageous for the reduction of a manufacturing cost, for example.
Accordingly, recently, as a method of manufacturing a liquid crystal display panel, for example, there has been proposed a method in which a polarization element film (polarization element layer) is directly formed on surfaces of the substrates which sandwich a liquid crystal layer therebetween. A material which is used in the direct formation of the polarization element film on the surfaces of the substrates and a forming method are described in JP 2009-132748 A or the like, for example.